For his dramatic jet landing on an aircraft carrier last week, George Bush wore a flight suit and a helmet and had to take underwater survival training in the White House swimming pool.

But as it turns out, the United States President chose to make the jet landing even after he was told he could easily reach the ship by helicopter, the White House said, changing its explanation for Mr Bush's Top Gun-style event.

Mr Bush's televised landing on USS Abraham Lincoln was the dramatic start to a visit to the carrier that included an air show and a televised speech to the nation in which he declared victory in Iraq in front of cheering sailors and a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished".

White House officials had said, before and after Mr Bush's landing in a S-3B Viking jet, he took the aircraft solely to avoid inconveniencing the sailors, who were returning after a deployment of nearly 10 months. They said Mr Bush decided not to wait until the ship was in helicopter range to avoid delaying the homecoming.

But instead of the carrier being hundreds of kilometres offshore, as aides had said it would be, the Lincoln was only about 50 kilometres from the coast when Mr Bush made his "tail-hook" landing, in which the jet was stopped by cables on deck. Navy officers slowed and turned the ship when land became visible.");document.write("

advertisement

");
}
}
// -->

Mr Bush wanted "to see an aircraft landing the same way that the pilots saw an aircraft landing," the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said on Tuesday.

"He wanted to see it as realistically as possible. And that's why . . . even when a helicopter option became doable, the President decided instead he wanted to still take the Viking."

Citing Mr Fleischer's revised explanation, a Democratic congressman, Henry Waxman, wrote to the General Accounting Office to ask for a "full accounting" of the cost of the trip.